


二体 Two Bodies

by skuldchan



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pre-Canon, Temple Husbands, growing up as Guardians of the Whills, probably not canon-compliant, spiritassassin, young Chirrut and Baze
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:14:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9564548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuldchan/pseuds/skuldchan
Summary: Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe had known each other since they were children, growing up in the service of the Temple of the Whills, inseparable, as students, Initiates, then Guardians. This is a collection of scenes from their lives, shaped by friends, enemies, and family.





	1. Mothers and Fathers

**Author's Note:**

> I am deeply indebted to [Leareth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Leareth/) for her hard work as a beta reader, for her brilliant editorial insight, for the offer of her words and her encouragement that enables me to continue to write. Thank you.

When Laanfei arrived at the door, Syuk came out with Chirrut on his shoulders and his husband Tonshan by his side. It was Laanfei and Ria’s week with their son, and despite how the terrible toddler menace always left their house looking as if a sandstorm had passed through, she had missed him dearly. 

“Do you want to go to Mommy?” Tonshan asked while Syuk playfully bounced Chirrut. 

“No! Play more!” Chirrut’s little voice was firm, and he smacked chubby palms against his father’s face, barely missing the eyes. 

Laanfei, Tonshan and Syuk all laughed; this was always how things went. They exchanged warm greetings as Syuk warned their son, “Five minutes, okay? While we get your stuff.” He tilted his head upward and leaned back so that Chirrut had to wrap arms around his forehead to hold on. “And then Mommy’s taking you home.”

He led the way back inside the house with Laanfei following after Tonshan. Toys were scattered all over the floor, the table was askew, and there were unwashed dishes piled by the sink. Laanfei shook her head; her home was going to look just the same in a week’s time. Tonshan hurried upstairs to gather Chirrut’s things—his favorite blanket, his favorite clothes, his cuddly ronto—while Syuk and Laanfei chatted. Laanfei made faces at Chirrut as he stared over his father’s head; she expected him to giggle as he always did, but Chirrut only blinked blankly then yanked a fistful of Syuk’s hair. 

“Ow!” Syuk protested. This time, Chirrut did giggle.

“Huh,” Laanfei mused. She watched carefully as Syuk finally set Chirrut on the ground, watched as Chirrut toddled towards her, and kept watching as Chirrut walked straight into her legs. She caught him as he stumbled. “I don’t think he saw me there,” she said quietly.

Syuk frowned. “But Doc Sao said his optic nerve implants were still working a couple of weeks ago.” 

“Maybe they’ve stopped working.” Laanfei dreaded that 'maybe'; this was the third procedure Chirrut had undergone to fix blindness, the third that had started with such promise but over time… “Ria and I will keep an eye on him, but we should contact the clinic.”

Tonshan came downstairs with the bag of Chirrut’s things, looking both weary and relieved. He squatted down in front of Chirrut to ask, “You ready for a week at Laanfei and Ria’s?”

Chirrut nodded. “Bankey,” he said, holding his hand out. Obediently, Tonshan dug around in the bag, gave him his comfort blanket, then kissed him on the forehead. 

“Don’t wreak havoc, little one.”

Laanfei groaned, slinging the bag over her shoulder and taking Chirrut’s hand. She shot Syuk and Tonshan a smile that spoke equally of fondness and exasperation. “Oh, you know he will. We’ve barely washed the stains from the walls.”


	2. The Temple

One of Baze’s earliest, clearest memories was from the Temple, sitting in the Grand Hall with his mother, and staring at the great pillar of kyber extruding from the center of its cavernous interior. Illuminated by a ring of lamps at its base, it seemed to scintillate with color whenever he moved, refracting slivers of light into the dimness of the temple rafters that stretched far above his head into the darkness. 

Adherents knelt or sat on the floor, arrayed around the great crystal in a radial pattern, hands pressed together in prayer as they whispered mantras and recited chants. Every sound, every movement echoed in the Grand Hall, be it the footfalls of the Guardians who walked amongst them, or Baze himself shifting on the zafu his mother had brought for him to sit on. 

During holy day services, the Temple would be packed to the brim and spill worshippers out the door onto the steps and into the streets. The sound in the Hall then was akin to the thunderclaps in the rainy season, with thousands of voices rising in unison and making the kyber itself reverberate with the Incantation, until it hummed and shone, as Baze imagined a Jedi’s incandescent saber would. But most days they went to the Temple, there was no need for Mama to drag him out of bed before sunrise to claim a prayer space. On most days, there was just a muted hubbub inside the chamber, and the kyber crystal would gleam and glitter above the small crowd of dedicated adherents like a column of distant stars.

When his mother prayed long (which was often), and when Baze grew bored of watching the crystal’s kaleidoscopic lights (less often), he would instead listen to the other sounds in the Temple, straining his ears for some snatch of conversation between the Guardian monks sweeping the floor, or for the laughter of the temple schoolchildren as they played in the courtyard. Sometimes, if Baze listened hard enough, if he closed his eyes and imagined himself drifting up into the darkness of the rafters, he would be able to hear the resonance, a quiet ringing that shifted and changed as unpredictably as Jedha’s sand dunes. If Baze concentrated, if he first found the Silence, then he would be able to find the Song.


	3. Contact

Up until today, Baze Malbus had only been vaguely aware of the existence of one Chirrut Îmwe, the blind kid in Si Class the year below. He’d caught glimpses of the kid over the years during morning prayers, during lunch, even occasionally seen the kid’s parents wait for him at the end of the day—were there four of them?—but had never been interested in knowing more. So Chirrut was blind, so what? Baze was not one to pay any mind to kids younger than him, and had companionship enough amongst his own peers.

Today, having changed into his training robes, Baze entered the Practice Hall where Master Xian was waiting for her class. Master Xian was his favorite teacher at the Temple School; she was nice and patient, explained things slowly, and never rapped his knuckles. So far this year she had made occasional appearances during Scripture on top of teaching them Physical Forms. 

Today, standing beside Master Xian, was a boy who was not supposed to be there. 

“Good morning. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve been joined by another student today, Chirrut Îmwe from Si Class. He’ll be doing his Forms with us from now on.” 

“Hello,” Chirrut waved with one hand, while the other clutched a thin cane. 

“Hi,” murmured a few voices in the class, their faces shooting each other similar incredulous glances before looking at their teacher with the same unspoken question. Was Master Xian serious?

Master Xian seemed unconcerned. “Okay, spread out, let’s get our bodies warmed up.” She gave Chirrut a gentle, encouraging shove, and he joined the rest of the group, his little cane sweeping in front of him. The other students danced gingerly out of the way, giving him a wide berth. 

Somehow, Chirrut navigated himself to the front and center of the room, the exact spot that Baze usually occupied. Annoyed, Baze shifted slightly off to the side, unwilling to give up the front row. 

Satisfied that the students had spread themselves out appropriately, Master Xian stepped forward and relieved Chirrut of his cane, setting it on the floor a short ways behind her. Then, with a single word, she commenced the warm-up.

Baze watched Chirrut out of the corner of his eye; the kid wouldn’t have been moved up to Hai Class without reason. Chirrut moved smoothly, with an air that Baze would years later describe as a confidence that also, Baze would admit upon this reflection, was entirely undeserved for someone of nine standard years of age. 

After warm-up came instruction. At this level, they were learning the more advanced of the Ancient Forms of the Whills. Master Xian demonstrated each stance for the class to follow, and for Chirrut, she physically moved his limbs to align his short, wiry body into position. Once this was done there was no need for correction; Chirrut held each stance perfectly, with only minimal adjustment from Master Xian with each repetition, as they moved slowly from one movement to another. As the class wore on, Baze realized with that the blind kid was actually managing to keep up. Then Master Xian caught him staring, and came over to critique his form from top to toe.

The last half of the training period was reserved for what Master Xian called practical application of their forms, or as the students would have it, a light sparring session. She usually asked for volunteers to start, but perhaps noticing the wary way that the rest of the class had been eyeing Chirrut, she simply chose this time. 

“Baze would you like to spar with Chirrut first?”

“Yes,” Baze’s reply was proud. He rather thought himself the best student in the class—or at least the smartest—and not too shabby with his forms either. Let’s see what this kid is made of, he thought as he stepped up to the front of the class. 

Chirrut had to be guided by Master Xian to stand before Baze at the appropriate distance. They bowed to each other. 

“Honor and life within the Force.”

Baze attacked first, with a feint. If Chirrut could hear his movements in the rustle of his sleeve, or if Chirrut could feel the movement of the air made by his fist, he would move to block the punch, and then Baze would sweep low. That was the plan anyway, until the world upended, the ceiling came into view, and Baze hit the padded floor with a _whump_ that knocked the wind out of him. 

He blinked, having very little idea how that had just happened. There was a similarly stunned silence in the room.

Master Xian clapped. “That was a masterful application of the Draxl Parting the Breeze,” she said, unable to fully hide the surprise in her voice. “You may bow to each other.”

Hastily, Baze scrambled to his feet. “Thank you for the honor of this match,” he said, placing his right fist in his left palm and lowering his head. When he looked up, Master Xian had already guided Chirrut back to his place, and was calling forth two other students. Baze turned his head to stare at Chirrut, still processing his abrupt defeat. Chirrut’s sightless eyes stared off to the side, apparently observing by sound alone. 

* * *

Resentment was heavy in Baze’s voice, which made Chirrut’s victories that much sweeter. 

“Honor and life within the Force.” 

By the time the words were out of his mouth, Chirrut was ready. What little he could see with his eyes—splotches of hazy color, large swathes of light and shadow, no depth, no shape—did him no good. Instead, he heard Baze’s breathing, and felt the dull vibrations of the larger boy’s steps. 

Baze’s breath hitched whenever he attacked, a staccato interruption of his flowing melody. Did Baze know that was his tell? Chirrut would never reveal that secret to him; some of the others in the class did it too. 

Chirrut roughly knew where Baze was standing; he would have to take a step to be within range. Baze was right handed, and sometimes would try to feint with his left. Yesterday, Baze had again attempted that feint; today, he probably would not. 

A single whisper was all that Chirrut heard, and all he needed to react. He stepped forward placing his foot behind Baze’s heel, blocked the arm swinging forward, and exchanged a few blows with Baze before he found an opening and swept his arm across Baze’s chest, delivering a light push. Levered against Chirrut’s foot, Baze toppled backward onto the floor. 

Chirrut took a step back, waited for the sound of Baze’s grumble as he picked himself up. 

“Thank you for the honor of this match,” Chirrut clasped fist to palm and bowed. 

The next day, when Master Xian asked who would like to spar first, Chirrut and Baze volunteered themselves.

“Honor and life within the Force.” 

This time instead of charging in, Chirrut heard Baze take a lateral step sliding his foot along the mat. Trying to circle him. Chirrut turned to face the direction of the sound, already ready. They orbited each other for a few revolutions, but in the end, the match ended as it always did. 

Chirrut bowed and said, “Thank you for the honor of his match.” There was a frustrated grunt, and Chirrut couldn’t help but give another small smile. 

* * *

The day after, when Master Xian asked would like to spar first, Chirrut and Baze volunteered themselves yet again. 

“Honor and life within the Force.” 

Baze did not move. Chirrut listened to his opponent’s breathing, faster, harsher than his own. He waited for an attack that did not come. After some time, the others in the class began to fidget, and even Master Xian heaved a quiet sigh. 

“Hurry up!” It was Tash, a Twi’lek girl. 

Baze’s breaths continued smoothly. Chirrut leapt forward, crossing the space between them in an instant. He was fast, he had to be, and he caught Baze off-guard, but the older boy reacted fast enough to avoid Chirrut’s first move, a palm strike aimed for the center of his chest. Chirrut pressed his advantage, taking another giant step forward, carrying his weight close and low into Baze’s space. Two firm palms pressed themselves against Baze’s waist, and lifted slightly. 

Baze staggered backward three steps, and then fell. Chirrut bowed.

“Thank you for the honor of this match.”

* * *

On the very next day, before Master Xian could even ask, Chirrut and Baze’s hands were in air.

“Honor and life within the Force.” 

Chirrut readied himself. Baze’s breathing was even, but his gi rustled in an unusual fashion. Chirrut listened to the sound, which wasn’t getting any closer. There were, however, a great number of snickers coming from the circle surrounding them. 

“Shhh!” Vihan, a Britaro boy, hissed. 

Chirrut wondered what Baze could be doing, when suddenly, he heard the boy’s step, and felt the eddies in the air in front of him. Chirrut shifted aside just in time, but the momentum behind Baze’s punch kept carrying him forward. Chirrut helped him gladly, his hands closing around the naked wrist of Baze’s outstretched hand, another supporting his upper arm. All Chirrut had to do was a give Baze a light push in the direction of his motion to knock him slightly off balance. Baze stumbled out of the circle, and the class burst into giggles. 

An interesting ploy, that ultimately proved fruitless, but Chirrut admired him for a second for his creativity, and his willingness to brave the cold. He bowed with a smirk and heard Master Xian say sternly, “Now put your pants back on, Baze.”

“It was a worth a try,” Baze muttered.

* * *

Day after day passed, and Chirrut lost count of his victories. Master Xian no longer bothered asking for volunteers, and the other kids in their class merely formed a circle around them. Chirrut had fought Baze every single day since he’d started training with Hai class, and he had not lost once. Sometimes he sparred twice, against Tash or Anya or Vihan, but Chirrut never lost those matches either. 

One day, when the all the children went back to the changing rooms to change into their robes and go to lunch, Chirrut hung back. 

“Master Xian,” Chirrut said, as the kindly teacher handed him his cane, “Can I ask if you can put me in the Zi Class?” 

“You can ask,” Master Xian replied, “but the answer is not yet.”

“But I’ve beaten all the kids in Hai class.” 

“You have. And?”

“Does...that get me into the class above?”

There was a pause that Chirrut could imagine Master Xian smiling in. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think the other students are done with you yet.”

Chirrut pondered this. “You mean Baze still wants to fight me.” 

“That is part of it,” Master Xian said, “but not all. Come on, Chirrut, why don’t you get changed and ponder that over some lunch?”

* * *

Baze hated losing, hated it with a single-minded fervor, but every time he sparred Chirrut, he tried to force himself to be calm. Breathe. Think. Chirrut surely couldn’t be invincible. Sure, nobody had beaten him yet, but the fact that he hadn’t advanced into the next class meant that Master Xian, at least, felt he belonged here. Meaning that Baze, or someone else in Baze’s class, had a chance at besting him. 

Baze had tried some creative variations in sussing out Chirrut’s weakness: holding his breath, taking his clothes off, trying to attack quickly, slowly, stealthily, and all combinations thereof. What more could he do?

Baze glared up at Chirrut who was smirking with his hands on his hips, victorious again. Chirrut’s bows were coming more and reluctantly lately; this time the kid instead reached out with a hand, ostensibly to help Baze up off the floor. Baze ignored it and got up himself, dusting his gi. 

“Be nice, boys,” Master Xian admonished patiently. “Bow.” 

Chirrut clasped his fist in his palm and turned toward her. 

“To your _opponent,_ Chirrut,” Master Xian said sternly, just as Chirrut was about to speak. “Or you’ll be sweeping the acolyte dormitories for the rest of the day after doing five laps of the Temple grounds.”

Chirrut snapped his mouth shut then swiveled back to Baze with a curt bow. “Thank you for the honor of this match.”

The line was fired off airily, clearly not a thank you, clearly not an honor, Chirrut clearly barely considering that their latest bout qualified as a match. Baze’s eyes narrowed, his fists tightening over his gi. Master Xian didn’t seem to have further comments on Chirrut’s conduct. 

She motioned to two other children in the circle. “Vihan and Anya, will you please step—”

“I want a rematch.” Baze’s voice was quiet. 

“Baze, you’ve already had your turn, your classmates—”

“I want a rematch,” Baze repeated, this time more firmly. He never took his eyes off of Chirrut, whose expression returned to its usual casual smirk. Baze resented that milky gaze, the head tossed vaguely in his direction, Chirrut’s almost-sightless stare probably purposefully fixed at a point just over his shoulder.

“Okay,” Chirrut said.

There was a small pause as the students stood uncertainly, and Master Xian’s shoulders fell imperceptibly. “Vihan and Anya,” she said. “What do you say?”

“Get him, Baze,” Anya said, her voice steely. She had made it amply known over the past few months that she did not like Chirrut in their class one bit. 

Vihan, on the other hand, shrugged. “If you really want to,” he said, sounding doubtful of Baze’s senses.

“Then, you may begin,” Master Xian said. 

Baze bowed. “Honor and life within the Force,” he intoned. Chirrut said the same, at least taking the first greeting seriously.

Baze took a deep breath. He’d been studying Chirrut closely for the past few weeks, how the boy moved and reacted—quickly—how Chirrut turned his ears in the direction of sound. But Chirrut was clever, he hadn’t seemed perturbed at Baze’s attempt at a naked spar match (to get rid of the sound of his clothes), and he hadn’t been tricked when Baze had taken his uwagi off and tossed it toward him as a distraction. How then, to catch him off guard? How then, to perform something that was unexpected?

Perhaps it was Chirrut’s unbroken string of victories that given him the arrogance to attack first, perhaps it was that Baze had already fought him just now, already centered himself, already pictured himself an immovable, unperturbable weight in a vast sea of darkness. Everything else shrank in Baze’s mind, and as he shut off sight, sound, smell, he found himself able to throw every ounce of his awareness forward. Chirrut was coming for him low, Baze realized. Chirrut always came at him low, even if he started high. It was something, maybe enough. Through numerous matches, he was starting to get accustomed to Chirrut’s speed. 

The first swing came in high, but Baze knew it wasn’t the real strike. He stepped forward to the side instead, a risky move that went against his every instinct to keep the little wiry boy away at a safe distance. He would bring the fight to Chirrut, where Chirrut expected to bring the fight to him. The younger boy did not move fast enough, once it must have dawned on him that Baze was not where he was supposed to be. On the outside, Chirrut’s high strike was useless, his back exposed. He managed his best to ward off Baze’s efforts for a few moves, to push back against Baze’s weight, but already off balance, he did not last beyond five exchanges before a sweep of Baze’s leg around the knees knocked him to the ground. 

It hadn’t been as quick as Chirrut’s victories, but it was Baze’s and that was all that mattered. 

A few whoops echoed in the room—Anya for sure—quickly silenced by Master Xian’s firm glare.

Baze stopped mid-fistpump, turning it smoothly into a clasp of his fist. “Thank you for the honor of this match.” 

Picking himself up, Chirrut flushed hotly. Baze knew a sore loser when he saw one, but he extended his hand anyway. Chirrut didn’t move.

“Take his hand, Chirrut,” Master Xian said patiently. 

With great reluctance, Chirrut stuck his own hand out where it wandered in the air. Baze grasped it, realizing belatedly that Chirrut couldn’t take what he couldn’t see, then on sudden impulse pulled Chirrut’s hand to guide him back into the circle. He heard a sharp intake of air —surprise, perhaps, or maybe the blind kid was just catching his breath—but whatever it was, it made Baze grin.

* * *

Winters on Jedha were long and harsh, with bitter winds that howled and wicked the sweat from Baze’s skin as fast as a smuggler ship jumping into hyperspace. He didn’t like to spar outside, but Master Xian’s balcony was the only place he and Chirrut could use after classes, when the Practice Hall and training rooms were often already in use by the acolytes or the fully appointed Guardians. 

Afterwards, Baze and Chirrut emerged into the Grand Hall together, Chirrut already waving goodbye to his friend to tap his way to the Temple gates where his parents were surely waiting. Baze on the other hand, always sauntered up Mama who waited for him inside the Hall, in prayer. She smiled when she saw him approach. “What’s the score today?” she asked. 

“One hundred and eighty-five,” Baze replied. 

“That’s one up from yesterday.” His mother positively beamed at him. “My little tie-breaker.”

Baze rolled his eyes. “Mama, I’m just sparring my friend. He’s probably gonna tie the score tomorrow anyway.” He wished she wouldn’t make such a big deal out of it; it was embarrassing. There were people in the Grand Hall who could hear—Guardian Baab was right over there! 

“Go for that breakaway, Baze.”

“Stop embarrassing me!”

She laughed at him, which made Baze scowl. Together, they walked home through the Holy Quarter.


	4. Certainty (I)

Baze bit back a cry as Chirrut’s staff rapped him sharply on the knuckles. In the next second, Chirrut gained control of his weapon, twisted it about in a circle until his grip loosened and it was spun away in a simple movement, rotating in a dramatic arc before it landed, bouncing end over end in the practice hall. 

Their classmates had already left for lunch along with Master Goong, who had given his tacit consent for Baze and Chirrut to use the room as they pleased, so long as they made it to the mess before the end of the lunch hour. 

“I feel like I have several inherent disadvantages,” Baze grumbled as he sighed and sank to the padded floor to catch his breath. He was bruised in multiple places on his legs, on his shoulders, and in the middle of his chest. He could hardly remember a time when he didn’t have some sort of bruise on him, even when Chirrut protested that he was hitting lightly. Maybe by a bantha’s standards.

Chirrut used a staff—the traditional weapon of Guardians of the Whills—like an extension of his own arm, whereas Baze always felt like he was trying to figure out where which end would go where in the next move. Last year his voice had dropped and his body was steadily growing taller and broader, whereas Chirrut seemed to be just stretching long and lean. Apparently Chirrut’s lithe speed, the hallmark of his childhood skill, was going to be with him for life, whereas Baze felt that he had been growing slow and clumsy. His staff lay far behind him, flung away in a dramatic disarming movement by his friend. 

“Baze, I’m blind,” Chirrut stated flatly. 

“You can still see a bit, right? You got that corneal sensor last year.”

“Yeah, and it stopped working six months later so I’m still blind,” Chirrut snapped.

Baze grunted; his friend kind of had him there. 

As if to emphasize his point, Chirrut tapped his way next to Baze, tapped his staff directly into Baze’s knee and sat down, kicking, nudging his foot purposefully into Baze side. “Ow!” Baze protested. “I hate you.” 

“I know,” Chirrut quipped. It was an exchange they had swapped often over the years.

Baze snorted, flopping onto the floor to stare at the ceiling. “You know, you sucked mightily at fighting when the implants were still working.” 

“Being able to see was so strange,” Chirrut admitted quietly. Then the humor that had drained out of his voice returned full force as Baze felt a foot jab into his side again. “Nice to see you went easy on me; I’m still twenty matches behind even now.”

“Ha! I’ll take what I can get.” 

“Get ready to lose twenty times straight.”

“Sure, but that’s just because you’re too sandmaggot to compete against me at shooting.”

“What part of ‘I’m blind’ do you not get?” Chirrut’s words came with a sharp pain in Baze’s ribs. “Though it would be a good excuse to shoot you in the face; that’d show you, you stupid gornt.”

Baze barked laugh at the insult, one he’d heard Chirrut say frequently, though now to his teenage ears it sounded so childish, even when uttered so earnestly by his friend. Chirrut responded by simply folding his arms and letting out a small “hmph.”

“I’m sorry about the implants,” Baze said, after a long silence had passed between them. 

“You better be,” Chirrut retorted, and then sighed. “It’s okay, I’m used to it. I’ve lost of track of how many operations I’ve had.” Baze felt the end of Chirrut’s staff poke his soft gut. “Thanks for reminding me, nerfloaf.”

Baze groaned before offering. “You’re fine, though.” His friend, he sensed, was teetering on the edge of a rare, very un-Chirrut melancholy and he wanted nothing more than to pull him back. “You don’t...really need to see anyway. I don’t know how you do it, but…actually, how do you do it?”

“Like this,” Chirrut said, and swiftly stabbed Baze twice with the butt end of his staff.

“No, I mean seriously,” Baze said, catching the end of Chirrut’s staff and giving it a shove back. “I’m pretty sure not every blind person can fight as well as you can.”

“I don’t know,” Chirrut shrugged. “I just...kinda know?” 

“You just know?” Baze asked skeptically.

“Yeah, that’s about the long and short of it. I just kind of feel you in a fight. Or anybody in a fight. And then, normally, if I can’t feel, I just kind of tap around with my cane and listen for the sounds. Everyone has a flow, you know? Everyone has a melody, like a...a, um...” Chirrut groped for a word.

“A song?”

“Not quite,” Chirrut frowned. “A vibration, a resonance, I guess. I feel it, so I know.” 

“Now you sound like Master Xian when she used to give lectures about the Force,” Baze sniffed.

“That’s the closest I got. What, you don’t hear anything because you’re too busy using your big eyeballs to see?”

“No,” Baze retorted, “sometimes—” Baze stopped mid-sentence as suddenly Master Xian’s head appeared in the doorway as if summoned. 

“Baze! Chirrut!” she clapped her hands and they shot to their feet immediately, reflexively, even though she’d stopped teaching them a couple of years ago now. “What are you doing? You’re about to miss lunch in the mess. Go!”

“Sorry, Master.” Baze apologized. He grabbed Chirrut’s staff and picked his own off the floor, placing it carefully amongst others in a bracket on the wall. 

“Sorry, Master Xian, we must’ve lost track of the time,” Chirrut said sweetly as he groped his way to the wall where he always leaned his cane. 

Baze rolled his eyes, Chirrut always thought he could sweet-talk Master Xian into going easy on him. “C’mon” he said, and grabbed his friend by the wrist to drag him down the corridor.


	5. Certainty (II)

Chirrut lounged on his bed, flipping through HoloNet channels. There was near-silence from the floor where Baze was arranged, punctuated by the occasional sound of his fingers tapping on his datapad. Chirrut had gone through two entire circuits of both local and galactic channels before he muted the viewscreen with a sigh. Nothing of interest. The two of them were supposed to be studying—or rather, Baze was supposed to be tutoring him. Mama Ria had insisted under no uncertain terms at the beginning of the year that if Chirrut didn’t pass all his classes, he would be so grounded with all viewscreen and sleepover privileges annulled, and any after school Forms supplementaries revoked.

Today, they’d managed to finish most of Chirrut’s assignments before giving up when Baze tried to explain 20-dimensional supermanifolds for the fifth time. 12-dimensional supermanifolds Chirrut understood, but 20 was too many dimensions. Sure, it was the mathematical basis for hyperspace travel, but Chirrut questioned whether he really, really needed to know it. He made a noise of disgust and rolled over on his bed. “Wanna spar?”

“No,” Baze replied firmly. “Besides, your mama would kill us if she found us sparring instead of studying.”

Chirrut made another noise of disgust. “I’m bored.” Baze ignored him. “What’re you doing? Are you coding your endorsement holospread again?”

“No,” Baze lied.

“I don’t know why you’ve spent so long on that thing.”

“I’m trying to create an accurate mixed model to extrapolate the four likeliest of our teachers to approach for an endorsement based on previous grades, test scores, and personal appraisal.”

“It’s easy, you don’t need a model,” Chirrut said. He’d been telling this to Baze for weeks, and wished that Baze would listen just so he could stop repeating himself. “Just ask Master Xian, Master Ramutandrin, Master Lhokhar, and Abbyx Mahala.”

“I still don’t know where Abbyx Mahala comes from,” Baze growled in annoyance, “she’s hardly even met me.”

“But she likes you. I’m sure she’d love to for you to stick around as an acolyte.” There was no way for that not to sound sarcastic to Baze’s ears, but Chirrut was trying here. “Seriously! I just know!”

“And we haven’t been taught by Xian in years,” Baze protested. “Seven years, to be exact.”

Chirrut shrugged. “So? I know she likes you too. She wants you to stick around, she’d miss you otherwise.”

“Ugh. I’m starting to doubt whether or not I want to stick around. Not sure I can take you hanging around me for another year.”

“Beating you, you mean.”

“I’d be an acolyte, Chirrut, we wouldn’t have classes together anymore.” 

“Oh,” Chirrut replied, realizing that Baze was probably right about that. “Wait, but I’m already in the highest Forms class! What’re they going to do about me next year?”

“I don’t know. Make you repeat the year?”

“No way.” Chirrut folded his arms. “I’m going to make them give me one-on-one sparring class with Baze Malbus. Who better to practice with than a full Initiate?”

“If you do, I’m going to kill you.”

Chirrut smirked. “You’re welcome to try.”

“You realize you’ll be taking Maximal Hypergravity Theory next year too, right?”

“Not if I get held back in Advanced Topology,” Chirrut replied cheerfully. He knew that Baze was scowling at his response and imagined what the expression would feel like. 

“All four of your parents would skin you alive if you failed Topology again.”

“Not Papa Tonshan,” Chirrut shook his head, “he loves me most of all.” 

Baze snorted. He tapped at his datapad, and Chirrut cocked his ear in his friend’s direction. He imagined Baze on the floor, the splay of Baze’s limbs as he leaned his back against the side of Chirrut’s bed. He had vague visual memories of Baze’s face captured in the space between new corneal implants and their inevitable failure; they were a little fuzzy around the edges, like faded holos of Baze at ten, twelve, and fifteen, static and frozen, infinitesimal slices of time carved out from the span of their friendship. His last one was three years old; he wondered how much his friend had changed. 

Chirrut extended a hand over the side of his bed and gingerly touched Baze’s cheek. He slid his fingers down Baze’s chin, brushing past a small plain of short, rough hairs. 

Chirrut heard Baze’s breath hitch quietly. He’d probably surprised his friend. “What’re you doing?” Baze asked. 

“Feeling your face,” Chirrut replied matter-of-factly. “It just occurred to me that I haven’t done this in a while.”

“I don’t think I’ve changed much since,” Baze said.

Chirrut laughed. “You’re completely different.”

“That’s because you’re doing it upside down. Humans are bad at recognizing faces upside down.”

“I don’t think that applies to blind people,” Chirrut said skeptically, and he moved his other hand too, to cup Baze’s face on his palms.

“It’s hard-wired into your brain, I’m pretty sure it does.”

“I don’t rely on vision, so I’m sure that part of my brain has been annexed for other functions.”

“Wanna bet it would feel more normal if I turned around?”

“I’ll see that bet,” Chirrut replied smoothly. 

Chirrut listened as Baze rearranged himself. He realized, once the sensation of Baze’s skin left his fingertips, that his hands were shaking. Like a drawn string he trembled, vibrating with a tension that he never felt before, that he had never imagined—since he’d become aware of the possibility—would feel this way. There was a heartbeat of silence between them as they both drew a breath and held it. If pressed for an answer at that moment, Chirrut would not have been able to say whether the throbbing he felt was the resonance that guided him in all things, or something more material. Mortal.

Chirrut exhaled slowly, and he felt Baze shift. Certainty unfurled before him, and Chirrut slid forward, closing that last inch between their lips. 

“Oh,” Chirrut breathed after a long while. He reached his hands forward and felt for Baze’s expression. “I think I understand 20-dimensional supermanifolds now.” 

Baze gave him a shove, and Chirrut laughed, rolling to the side. He didn’t need to reach out before Baze’s lips were on him again, and he threaded his fingers through Baze’s hair. There was no more tutoring that afternoon.


	6. Alcoves

Lunchtime was a blessed period of quiet for the Temple School teachers. During the midday meal, many of the Masters would gather in the Teacher’s Office to share food and trade stories of the children, lament the troublemakers, or note a student’s particular talent or interest. This lunchtime, Master Saljit Goong poked his head through the doorway a little later than usual. 

“Has anybody seen Initiate Malbus?” he asked. “He’s normally sparring with Chirrut in one of the practice rooms, but they’re not there. He’s supposed to be helping clean the aeroponics tanks today.”

Abbyx Meya, who still wore her white hair in a braid over her shoulder, who was half of the pair of hands that had guided and nurtured the Temple for thirty years, felt a small smile creep onto her face. “Xian and I were just discussing them,” she said mildly. “Surely you haven’t _just_ noticed them missing.”

Goong hesitated. The old Abbyx was blinking at him with exaggerated expectancy, and for a moment she was once again Master Meya and Goong a young Hai class student struggling to answer questions in Xenobiology class. “I noticed about a week ago?” 

Xian snickered, and turned it into a polite cough.

“Why don’t you try one of the shadowy alcoves in the north wing of the twentieth floor,” Abbyx Meya suggested. 

Goong’s look was not lost on the rest of the teachers sitting around the table, most of whom returned carefully neutral expressions. The only exception was Petra Ramutandrin, who rolled her eyes at him over another bite of jogan fruit. “How do you know that?” Goong asked.

“Because Mahala and I used to tryst there when we were young.”

“Oh,” Goong paused as several realizations clicked into place. “Right. Well, Malbus is going to be in huge trouble when he’s done.”

The others watched as Goong stalked off, presumably to make Malbus finish his tryst. 

“Poor Baze,” Xian said with a sigh as she turned back to her lunch, “he’s having a rough start for an acolyte.”

“Mm, it’ll be worse next year, I’m sure,” Abbyx Meya mused. 

“Do you think Chirrut will stay on?” Xian asked hopefully.

“I’m sure he wants to, and I can’t imagine anyone writing him a poor endorsement despite his grades,” Meya chuckled. “Except for you, Petra. How’s he doing in Maximal Hypergravity Theory?”

“Abysmal,” Ramutandrin replied severely, which was undermined by the barely-suppressed curve of her lips. “But I can’t imagine him anywhere but here.”


	7. Acolytes

Baze’s first year as an acolyte went by like a blur. Now officially an Initiate of the Whills, this was the beginning of the sacred lifelong duty he had chosen, to serve the Temple and protect its kyber. His departure from home was less bittersweet than it was for his peers; Tash was from Ryloth, her opportunities to see her family again were rarer than Baze’s, whose mother lived just beyond the Holy Quarter, who came to pray at sunset almost every day. 

It was strange at first to be amongst a smaller group; only four of the ninety-something kids in his year had made the commitment to becoming an Initiate, and it was stranger still to no longer be studying or attending lectures, but instead performing mundane Temple duties—sweeping the halls, cleaning the aeroponics pumps, peeling mountains of protatos in the kitchen. His days began with the Dawn Incantation to greet the sunrise, and ended long after sundown with the Midnight Rites. Where he could he stole small moments with Chirrut, or rather Chirrut managed to steal him away instead. Chirrut seemed to appear—whether by coincidence or instinct—whenever the loneliness of his new life threatened to engulf him, and would spirit him off into an alcove tucked in an ill-trafficked corridor or place a quick, secret kiss on his cheek while they sparred with the rest of the acolytes. Because far be it for Chirrut to sit complacently for a second year in the Senior Forms, when he could wheedle advancing into the acolyte practice hour from Grandmaster Paneggan.

Sometimes, Chirrut would stay long after school hours and accompany him on his ritual patrol along the Temple perimeter.

“Your parents are going to let you apply for Initiate?” Baze asked in disbelief one evening, as they strolled the edges of the Temple complex. A bitterly cold wind whipped at their clothes, Baze bundled in the blue and red of the Initiate, Chirrut wrapped in a thick red coat over his yellow school robes. “I thought that your moms were Force-bent on sending you to Coruscant for remedial physics.” 

“No child of mine is going into adulthood without being able to do complex topology in his head,” Chirrut wagged a finger and shook his head, a perfect impression of Mama Laanfei that made Baze smile. Chirrut continued, “It took a lot of convincing and a couple of well-timed tantrums. Also, maybe I know their ultra-secret weak spot.”

Baze raised an eyebrow. “What’s their ultra-secret weak spot?”

“They met in school and fell in love.” 

Baze supposed that was rather fitting for Chirrut’s mothers. “So, do you have any ideas who you’re going to ask for your endorsements?”

“Actually, Masters Ramutandrin and Xian, and both Abbices have already given me their endorsement.”

Baze balked. “But you’re almost failing Ramutandrin’s class!” he protested.

“She has witnessed my struggles and judged me worthy,” replied Chirrut with utmost solemnity.

Baze prayed silently that the Force give him strength.

Chirrut laughed, unable to maintain a sober composure for more than ten seconds. “Maybe Master Ramutandrin’s noticed how lonely you are without me.” 

“I’m going to throw you straight over the city walls,” Baze growled, but was unable to keep the fondness out of his voice. He grabbed Chirrut in the beginnings of an action that mimicked a great bodily lift, but Chirrut whispered, “we’re alone,” and instead Baze wrapped his arms around Chirrut’s shoulders and drew him close.

“You’re going to hate peeling twenty kilos of protatos,” Baze murmured minutes later, when their lips finally parted. As the last of the sun slid beneath the horizon, the lights around the Temple winked into life, illuminating a gentle flush of Chirrut’s cheeks that couldn’t all be the work of the wind. 

Chirrut managed a wry smile and leaned his weight against Baze’s body. “I bet it’ll be twice as worse if I have to peel them with you.”

He danced away, laughing, as Baze shouted and gave chase.

* * *

All four of Chirrut’s parents cried at the Temple steps when Chirrut packed his things and left both of his childhood homes behind.

“Take care of him for us,” Tonshan said, putting a hand on Baze’s shoulder. Baze wasn’t quite sure why he had come here to say his farewells, but it felt right. “You know Chirrut can’t be serious for longer than a minute at a time.” 

“I’d credit me about half that,” Chirrut interjected cheerily. “But I’m sure Baze will keep me on a short leash.” 

Baze flushed, as Chirrut’s comment rendered everyone in the group silent. His mind blanked on what to say next. “I-I’ll look after him,” he finally managed. 

“And he’ll only be half-successful.” 

Baze delivered a kick to Chirrut’s shins which was easily evaded. 

Chirrut smiled and waved until his parents piled back into their transport. Silently, Baze watched his friend listen to the sound of the vehicle making off into the distance until it melted into the ebb and flow of traffic in the Holy City. Then they turned, Baze gathering Chirrut in one arm to give his quaking shoulders a tight squeeze. Together, they walked back through the doors of the Temple of the Whills.


	8. Periastron

Chirrut had nothing personal against his roommate, Ceppler, but there was an inherent un-Bazeness to zir that could only be remedied by a roommate exchange. It was sensitive topic, Chirrut was aware, but he broached it nonetheless one night, with a very heartfelt and apologetic, “It’s not you, it’s me,” followed by, “I like you as a person—Sullustan?—and a roommate, but it’s just—”

“I’m not Baze?” Ceppler supplied with a sigh. 

It sounded rather blunt when his roommate put it like that, but Chirrut tried not to cringe, tentatively hopeful.

Ceppler laughed. “I know, I’m not offended, and if getting laid more makes you less jittery, then go ask for a transfer. But I’m keeping the HoloScreen.”

“Thanks,” said Chirrut, beaming, happy to throw a HoloScreen he didn’t need anyway into the deal, and headed off to start the petitioning process right there and then.

He started off with Master—no, he should address her as Guardian now that he was an Initiate—Guardian Yokui Xian, who had watch him grow all throughout Temple School and was therefore most pliable to pleading and begging. She sympathized, but directed him to Guardian Petra Ramutandrin, who was responsible for Chirrut’s Initiate cohort. Guardian Ramutandrin had provided Chirrut with a suitable letter of endorsement to become an Initiate, but on the subject of supporting Chirrut in his endeavours to, as Ceppler put it, ‘get laid more,’ she was less receptive. Chirrut had protested that Guardian Ramutandrin was misreading his motives, but she remained unswayed and punted him to Guardian T’ammadri Stele. Stele administered the dormitory and classroom allocations, and didn’t even let Chirrut finish his plea before saying, “All is as the Force wills it,” which, when Chirrut tried to ask again in a different way, was repeated more slowly and more firmly, until Chirrut had to give up and leave.

Chirrut prayed for two days for the Force to do something about his roommate being not-Baze. Baze joined him in his fervent prayers after, for the third time that month, a security droid glided silently into their shadowed alcove, raised the alarm, and then blanketed them with paralyzing spray. It had taken four hours for the spray’s effect to wear off, and Chirrut’s knees had ached from kneeling the whole time. 

Deciding to take matters into his own hands, Chirrut went straight up the chain of command to the Abbices’ Office. Mahala and Meya were Joined, had been for more than twice as long as Chirrut had been alive, surely they would understand and sympathize with his plight. Unfortunately, in this he was also wrong. 

“All is as the Force wills it,” Abbyx Mahala stated. From the tapping Chirrut could hear, she was apparently working at her data console. 

“But that’s not really an argument against a roommate swap,” Chirrut suggested as mildly as he was able.

“The Force works in mysterious ways,” replied Mahala. “And adversity builds character.”

Dissatisfied with either of those statements as answers, Chirrut frowned.

“We tend to house our year-cohorts together,” Abbyx Meya explained, her voice accompanied with the sound of a datapad being set down. “Your activities and assignments might differ by cohort as an Initiate, so it is a matter of convenience that you’re housed together.”

“If it’s a matter of convenience, that means it’s not that important, right?”

“It is a matter of convenience, yes,” Abbyx Meya agreed, and went no further. 

A long silence fell, filled only with Abbyx Mahala’s console tapping. Chirrut had heard Baze describe Meya as kind, but always smiling expectantly as if everyone in the world was her student. Though he had never been her student, Chirrut was sure she was smiling at him now. He tried again. “Can you make an exception for us? I mean, I’m blind...and I’ve known Baze for so long, only he knows how to help me best.”

“I’m sure Ceppler would be willing to learn how to help you,” said Mahala as Chirrut scowled. 

“I know of some lovely alcoves on the twentieth floor,” Meya suggested brightly. 

“That’s where we got sprayed by the droid.”

“Ah yes, I read those reports,” Meya said, “we’ve sent that droid for repairs. We are very sorry about that, little one.”

Chirrut tried to protest that maybe the droid incident could have been averted if he’d been rooming with Baze instead, but then the Abbices called in Secretary Bi who announced the Abbices’ next appointment. Politely, Chirrut was shown the door. 

* * *

As the year wore on, Chirrut and the younger acolytes settled into a schedule. They rotated through Temple responsibilities, which were expected to be completed on top of all their meditation, scriptures, services, and further training in the ancient ways of the Guardians. Somehow, Chirrut managed to find time to be with Baze, sometimes when crossing paths during the twilight patrol, other times in the mornings when they had to check the tank pressure of the water extractors. It wasn’t that bad; if they were passing in the corridors it was the work of a moment to pause and exchange a swift kiss, and the machinery of the water extractors ran such a horrible racket no one could hear Baze's groans as Chirrut sneaked a hand between the folds of his robes.

Stolen moments like that were all they had together, and all they’d been able to make do with for the past year and several months. Chirrut enjoyed them, but he ached for something more prolonged, some length of time that didn’t have to be stolen, a night that was meant to be all theirs from the very beginning. He didn’t want their every touch to be getting off in dark corners or finding expedient release in cramped closets; he wanted to savor Baze’s hands running over his body and feel the prickly hairs of Baze’s chin brushing against his stomach and naked thighs. He wanted to hear Baze laugh and moan and tell him sweet nothings, he wanted to listen to the deep resonance of Baze’s voice, and the more Chirrut wanted, the more he felt he could no longer be satisfied with Baze in clandestine corners. 

The Abbices had denied him a roommate transfer, which left Chirrut to apply his cleverness and influence instead. If he was fortunate, they might have a few nights. That would be enough for now. 

* * *

“Can I swap my patrol week with your admin week next rota?” Chirrut asked Ceppler. 

“And get patrol duty back to back with dish duty? No thanks.”

“Please? I really need this favor.”

“...Is this Baze time? Are you breaking down because you need Baze time?”

“Yes, by the Force, yes. I need Baze so badly right now you can’t possibly fully comprehend.”

“You’re right about that,” Ceppler replied wryly, “and I don’t think I ever will. Fine, I’ll swap, but I want double.”

“Admin and a patrol,” Chirrut said, gladly throwing another one on the pile. “Any time you need it.”

“Deal,” Ceppler grunted, and they shook.

* * *

Chirrut tucked Baze’s softening member back into his clothes. He was pleased with his work, but now that Chirrut could imagine what he could be having instead, what he could be getting soon, each time they’d caught each other seemed less satisfying than the last. Still flushed, Chirrut rose his feet, Baze’s hand cupping his face to brush a thumb across his lower lip. “How I can return the favor?” Baze asked. 

The words had been spoken quietly, but Chirrut still shivered. He could only imagine how it would feel to hear Baze purring the question out loud in a baritone touch against his skin.  
Leaning into his lover’s caress, Chirrut brought his lips up to Baze’s ear before murmuring, “I want to feel you inside me.”

Baze hissed, an intake of breath so sharp and uncontrolled it went straight down Chirrut’s spine and lodged between his legs. “Force, Chirrut,” Baze cursed, “I want to, but—”

“Next Primeday, my room, after the nineteenth hour.”

“Don’t you have patrol next week?” 

“Not anymore,” replied Chirrut with an inordinately pleased grin.

Two large hands clamped hard around his waist. Chirrut left out a soft moan as Baze brought them impossibly close and growled, “You’ve been planning this for a while.”

“I’ve been doing my homework,” Chirrut admitted. He didn’t want to get into details, particularly the ones featuring Papas Syuk and Tonshan’s good-natured laughs as they supplied him with instructions and advice. Baze would find out soon enough. Instead, Chirrut reached up and hooked his hands behind Baze’s neck to give his lover an embrace as tight as the grip around his hips. “Primeday. You can return the favor then, handsome.”

* * *

Next Primeday was four days away. Their schedules this week did not mesh well with sneaking off into alcoves, with Chirrut rising early to ring the Dawn Bells that roused the Temple residents, and assisting Guardian Goong with the remedial Forms classes during Baze’s free hour. His own free hour coincided with Baze at evening services, so they were forced to keep their exchanges to brief, chaste kisses in the corridors, amongst the other acolytes and Guardians, who although only snorted softly as they passed, strictly discouraged any further dalliance. 

Chirrut’s parting words, whenever they separated to go on to their next duties, were just a countdown to the next Primeday. 

“Wow, Baze, you’re really red,” Chirrut heard Tash giggle down the hall, after he left Baze with the word, ‘one.’ 

When the long-awaited day dawned with their new duty rotas, Chirrut found himself pulled abruptly aside after the lunch hour while on his way to the classrooms. He kissed Baze a little more enthusiastically than they’d been able to the past few days, but saved the rest of the excitement for later. 

“Nineteenth hour,” he said, placing a firm hand on Baze’s chest, keeping him at a respectable distance. “Until then, no freebies.” 

He had left Baze emitting a low-pitched, frustrated growl then, which meant later, when the appointed time arrived and Chirrut opened the door to Baze’s demanding knock, Chirrut found himself nearly bowled over and staggering under the force of Baze’s hug. He had a seduction planned out, just in case Baze showed up suddenly uncharacteristically wary or shy, but the growing hardness pressing against his thigh was evidence he wouldn’t be needing it. 

“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Baze growled. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

Chirrut laughed, nuzzling close. Baze was the one who’d dragged him into the corner that morning. “I have an idea for how you can thank me,” he said as he lifted his head, allowing Baze the opportunity to choose to close the last few inches between them.

“Oh, do you?” Baze pressed a short, powerful kiss to Chirrut’s mouth, a tease of more to come, perhaps. “Does it happen to be the same thing you’ve tortured me with for the past two days?”

“How did you know?” 

“I just know.” 

They dived into each other with abandon, with lips and teeth and gasps, still standing where Baze had tackled Chirrut, unaware of past or future, Chirrut delighting in the sensation of Baze in this arms, Baze before him, not having to squeeze into the shadows or muffle his moans. He twined his fingers through Baze’s hair, closing his fist around the thick strands, tugging with a ferocity that matched Baze’s own eagerness. Chirrut groaned loudly as Baze gave his ass a squeeze, and enticed his lover by placing a sharp bite at the exposed flesh of his neck. Baze grabbed him again, so hard that Chirrut lifted onto his toes. 

Chirrut hissed, lust coursing through his body as he returned Baze’s hungry kisses, pressing, pushing, dipping, battling to express his ardor, to elicit anything—a gasp, a hitching of Baze’s breath. Chirrut bared his neck and grinned as Baze grunted, nosing at his skin and sinking his teeth in firmly. He revelled in the sheer joy of having Baze all to himself, of Baze’s naked desire for him, and not just for the pleasures of their bodies. He had never wanted Baze as strongly as he did now, the very air between them ablaze with every exhalation, as if their lungs were trembling, striking an ancient, primal chord that echoed deep within. Chirrut rose his toes again, eliciting more of his lover’s ravenous grasping; he would have melted forever into Baze’s generous touches, but the other man paused for a moment, and then they both stood, chests heaving, as if time had been suspended. Baze must have felt…

“What’s this?” Baze asked, his hand wandering across Chirrut’s ass experimentally, feeling something hard and unforgiving. It made Chirrut shiver.

“Come to bed and I’ll show you,” he moaned.

Baze didn’t have to be told twice. They toppled into Chirrut’s bed with a distinct lack of grace, shedding pieces of clothing as they went without care—Chirrut had originally planned a slow striptease, but there was no salvaging that aspiration now, with all their garments flung away in desperation.

“Sweet Force,” cursed Baze as Chirrut, on his hands and knees, slipped off his last piece of undergarments, revealing the base of a buttplug nestled between his cheeks. A long silence ensued, and not a single sound escaped Baze until he uttered a low, savage, “Fuck.”

The sound stabbed straight into Chirrut’s core, and he groaned just from the unadulterated want in his lover’s voice. “Don’t leave me hanging,” Chirrut chided with a little wiggle of his bottom. “I’ve been opening myself up all week just for you.”

Baze growled, a noise of sheer, impatient frustration. 

“Take it out,” Chirrut urged, raising his ass enticingly. “Slowly.” He steeled himself when he felt Baze wrap fingers around the base of the plug to give it a gentle pull. His sphincter gave way, and then time seemed to move to slowly and too quickly all at once, not enough to savor the slide—his opening widening and narrowing again—but also too soon to prepare himself for the feeling of loss, the emptiness he felt once Baze had retrieved the toy fully. Chirrut found that he had collapsed into the sheets, panting. He made a noise of frustration, but Baze placed a gentle hand on him, and he stilled. “I’m still wet inside,” Chirrut groaned, every fiber in his body screaming out for Baze’s penetration.

“I know,” Baze replied, and Chirrut felt a finger press against his entrance, sliding inside easily, just a fraction of the fullness that he had lost. Chirrut begged for it, trying to push against his lover, but Baze’s hand stopped him short, implacably serene where he was all a conflagration of carnal need. “Shhh,” Baze murmured. “Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be prepared.” 

Chirrut heard the click of a something plastic, had Baze brought his own lubrication? For now Baze’s gesture was lost on him, but he would remember it later, and be touched by the care that his lover showed, gripped even in the midst of their heady desire. An excruciating eternity passed before Chirrut felt Baze’s hands move on him, a firm and commanding touch that he acquiesced to easily. Baze positioned himself himself at his entrance and every muscle in Chirrut’s body strained, crying out in need and want before Baze pushed into him with gentle, shallow strokes. Even at just that initial sensation, Chirrut felt himself shattering, and he pressed his face into the bed with a moan. This completeness, this sensation of Baze filling him, pushing against the boundaries of his awareness, was what he’d been wanting since he tired of quick pleasures and simple orgasms, since he realized that he wanted more from Baze, his friend, his brother, his lover. 

Baze sank deeper with every movement, barely meeting any resistance from Chirrut’s willing body, and then began rutting in earnest, Chirrut crying out with every thrust. Baze’s grip held him steady, guided him in their rhythm, as sensation overpowered all of Chirrut’s other senses, drowning out sound, smell, taste, leaving him with the abundance of being fucked, of offering himself to Baze and taking his lover into him in turn. Chirrut was not sure how long he would last like this, desire cresting inside of him, wave after relentless wave, until Baze suddenly stopped and Chirrut let out a long groan, struggling, wiggling for Baze to continue.

“On your back,” Baze gasped. 

Chirrut processed those words slowly, whimpering as Baze’s cock withdrew, as hands shoved at him, trying to make him understand. “I want to see you,” said Baze gruffly. Somehow, Chirrut managed to flop onto his back, repositioning himself with Baze’s assistance, lifting his knees over Baze’s shoulder, shifting his hips onto the pillow that Baze shoved beneath him. 

Chirrut arched as he felt Baze approach again, pressing into him harder and faster, control clearly waning. The new angle offered him different pleasures, each thrust a new thrill up Chirrut’s spine. In this position Chirrut could reach out and touch Baze’s cheek, wander fingers over his forehead, nose, and lips, and feel the sweat that was beading on his skin. He could wrap his arms around Baze’s shoulders and bury himself in his lover’s scent as Baze rode him hard, clinging to pleasure as the increasing speed threatened to overwhelm him, threatened to deliver the release he so desperately wanted but would regret for its brief transience. Soon there was no telling anymore where Chirrut ended and where Baze began; they were one in body, in spirit, their breaths in unison, their gasps mingling their voices keening like the soft song of the kyber that Chirrut could sometimes hear when he meditated, when he prayed and reached out to his faith through the darkness. 

It took only a few more tugs of Chirrut’s cock before he froze and came, his legs wrapped around Baze’s shoulders, ecstasy washing over him, drowning his awareness. He shuddered violently as Baze continued, only vaguely processing the broken, erratic pace of Baze’s thrusts before his lover cried, his entire frame quaking before collapse. 

Pleasure was reluctant to give to way to consciousness, but gradually the hammering of Chirrut’s heart slowed and the heaving of his lungs subsided. Satisfied, Chirrut wended his fingers once more through Baze’s hair, his lover’s form relaxed, draped over him entirely. He felt like a rag that Baze had squeezed and wrung out: exhausted, sore, but unbelievably good. Chirrut took a bit of time, seeking the sensations he had just experienced, committing each and every detail to his memory—his first time making love.

Without words, they lay together, squeezed into the narrow space of Chirrut’s bed, caressing one another, feeling again, the edges of their own two bodies, separate once more. Eventually Baze asked, “you all right?”

“Never better,” He felt Baze’s fingers brush the corners of his mouth, was he smiling that wide? “Might be a bit sore in the morning, though.”

“Sorry,” Baze mumbled, though he sounded not sorry at all.

“I’ll be blaming you, you know,” replied Chirrut archly, “if anybody asks why I’m walking stiffly tomorrow.”

Baze laughed, a rich baritone that warmed Chirrut, that filled him from deep within. “You just want the whole world to know.”

“You don’t seem to mind.”

“I don’t,” Baze admitted. “Maybe I want them to know how lucky I am to have you.”

Chirrut didn’t think that luck had anything to do with it, if ‘All is as the Force wills it,’ as his teachers often intoned. He searched inside and finding himself content, curled up to lie beside Baze and share the feeling between their skin. “How long did you swap patrol rounds for?” Baze asked quietly.

“Ceppler’s covering me all week,” Chirrut said, and felt a laugh beneath his ear. When he reached out to touch Baze’s face, he was smiling.


	9. Arrival

Chirrut was not very good at assisting the services in the Grand Hall, which was why he’d been assigned to Guardian Aurel Ishan, a newly appointed Chiss teacher, for a third month in a row. When Ishan led the evening’s devotees in the Sunset Prayer, Chirrut would settle on his cushion and listen to the voices raised in recitation, cutting his awareness loose to let it bob and float with the echoing drone. There was a technique to listening to the hum of the kyber, to allowing the world around him to fade, to emptying himself and hearing the silence beyond the resonance. He would sit in the center of the room, near the crystal pillar, doing nothing but humming along with its soft oscillations. It was not what he was supposed to do, which was why he often missed his cues to strike the song bells or coax a clarion tone from the ringing bows. His willful dereliction of his duties, as Ishan often put it, was the reason this was about his ninetieth evening here. 

This night, like almost all nights, Chirrut floated above, away from the Hall with just the faintest tether of awareness, until a dramatic flutter of cloth and the sound of strident footsteps wrenched him from his meditation. The prayer carried on around him, but Chirrut’s concentration had been broken, plunging him back to earth, and he heard the interloper take a seat near the center of the room, near the kyber and next to him. They arranged themselves on one of the zafu, and then, as suddenly as they’d arrived, the newcomer fell silent and still, vanishing entirely from Chirrut’s senses. Instinctively, his heartbeat spiked with alarm. 

Eventually, the services ended, and the congregation rose with the soothing murmur of a small crowd, filling Chirrut’s senses with movement and the patter of a hundred footsteps shuffling toward the Temple doors. Papa Syuk and Baze’s mother, Danahz, had been amongst those who had prayed tonight and both lingered, diverting Chirrut’s attention.

“Are you all right?” Papa Syuk said when he approached. 

“I’m fine, Papa,” Chirrut replied simply as he let himself be enveloped in his father’s embrace. Papa Syuk smelled like their house, and Chirrut let himself feel a small pang of homesickness, and comforted himself, however briefly, in Papa’s hug.

“You don’t look so good tonight, Chirrut,” said Danahz Malbus, giving Chirrut a big, warm hug as well. 

“Well, it was Baze on kitchen duty today, Ma’am.” 

Danahz let out a laugh that echoed throughout the Hall.

Papa Syuk snorted. “I bet he suffers double when it’s your turn.”

“Don’t you know it,” Chirrut laughed. 

His father and Baze’s mother stayed to chat until almost the last of the crowd had trickled out. Chirrut continued to smile as he exchanged goodbyes with them, convinced now that he must have imagined the intruder before. Guardian Ishan had also left, leaving Chirrut to close up and lock the Temple as per his duties. Chirrut made his way to the door, sweeping his cane in front of him until something grabbed it. Startled, Chirrut leapt backward, letting it go. 

“Easy there, acolyte.” 

Chirrut’s heart hammered, his senses on full alert. It was the intruder he had felt earlier and had disappeared. She—the voice sounded human, alto—had been here the whole time and Chirrut had not even noticed her move or walk from where she had sat before.

“Here, you can have this back, I don’t take things from blind kids.” She spoke Basic, proper Core System Basic even, an accent Chirrut had only ever heard on the HoloNet Nightly News.

From out of Chirrut’s senses came the sound of his cane tossed through the air. He barely caught it before he was hit in the face. Baze had tossed him practice staffs before, brooms, lightbows, datapads, his clothes. They had never come from darkness, never come from nowhere. 

Chirrut let out a breath that rattled his lungs. Who are you? he wanted to ask, but the answer was already a glimmer of disbelief in his mind. 

“Take me to Abbyx Mahala, I need to speak with her immediately.”

“I-I’m afraid that Abbyx Mahala is no longer with us,” Chirrut tried to feel this person, this new woman, but there was nothing for him to feel. He strained every sense he had, stilled himself so he could listen to the surrounding resonance of the kyber, but even that seemed to fade away around the stranger, as if she were a black hole, consuming energy and leaving nothing behind for Chirrut to work with. He could only listen with his ears, and they told him little.

“Meya will do then.”

“Guardian Meya has retired since the death of—”

“Enough. Then take me to your current Abbyx, Abbices, whoever and however many there are, and tell them that a Jedi has come to request that your Temple honor their old agreements.” 

Chirrut’s breath hitched, the word echoing in his mind. Jedi. They were ancient heroes of legend, attuned to the Force, able to use it to manipulate the world; every child in the galaxy knew about them as adventurers and defenders of justice, devoting their lives to the protection of the Republic and its people. There were few stories of Jedi from modern times, though they no loomed no lesser in Chirrut’s mind than their mythical counterparts. To the Guardians of the Whills, it was told that Jedi had aided the founding of the Temple six thousand years ago and were vessels of the Force itself, dutiful servants of its bidding, gifted with power and wisdom. They were to be respected, admired, and feared. Only a handful of people ever had the fortune—or misfortune—to meet one in real life. 

Chirrut had never in his life felt as blind as he did now. 

“Yes,” he murmured obediently. He led the way, following the strange compulsion to deliver the Jedi to her destination.

* * *

“Thank you, Chirrut,” was all Abbyx Stele said when he brought the Jedi to them. “Please wait outside until further instruction.”

So Chirrut stood patiently by the door of the Abbyx’s office, and couldn’t help but overhear snatches of conversation, every time that the Jedi raised her voice. 

“...the Council has granted me a sabbatical…I must begin my research at once…I do not think you fully under the impact that my research could have in the field of kyber crystallography!...”

Chirrut had calmed since his initial alarm, though he could feel his body was still tense and ready to respond at any provocation. The Jedi was a void to his senses, darkness, nothing. He wondered what she looked like—did she look human? Jedi were supposed to look just like any other lifeform in the galaxy, was it true?

“Are you trying to insinuate that I can’t be trusted in your precious chamber?...This is an outrage!...”

After a long period of quiet, the Abbyx’s door slid open with a smooth hiss.

“Chirrut, please come in,” Abbyx Stele said. 

Sweeping his path with his cane, Chirrut entered, and bowed respectfully to his elder. He stood in the center of the room, waiting for instruction.

“Hmm,” came the sound of the Jedi’s voice. He had not managed to overhear her name. 

“Acolyte, why don’t you introduce yourself to our guest here,” Abbyx Stele suggested. 

Chirrut turned in the direction from whence he last heard the Jedi’s voice, though he had no guarantee that she would still be there. “Chirrut Îmwe, Initiate of the Whills. How may I address…?” 

“Juris Okorefor. Jedi Master.”

“Master Okorefor.” Chirrut’s voice trembled. 

“Fascinating,” he heard Juris murmur. “I know it’s possible, but I’ve never met one before.” Chirrut stayed silent. “How much can you see through your eyes, Chirrut?”

“Not much,” Chirrut replied. “I don’t use my eyes to see.”

“I know,” Juris replied, somehow satisfied with that answer. “How well do you hear? How well do you feel?”

“There is nothing wrong with any of my other faculties,” Chirrut retorted, ire aroused at the insinuation that he might be defective in any other way.

“No? Then, how do you explain this?”

A hand smacked Chirrut on the side of the head. The movement had not stirred a single one of his senses, it had moved no air, made no sound, and there’d been no way for him to avoid it. He scowled; that had hardly seemed fair.

“Master Okorefor! You will refrain from physically harming any of my Initiates!” Abbyx Stele snapped.

“Just a demonstration, dear Abbyx. No harm done,” Juris replied. “How about now then?” she asked.

Sound, feeling, returned to Chirrut, like a gasp of air after holding his breath for an eternity, like his head breaking out of water to hear the chatter and laughter of the acolytes in the baths. Whatever nothingness had enshrouded Juris before disappeared. The air in front of him roared, and he brought up his right hand, blocking another swing from the Jedi. He might have followed up with another movement, but the Jedi Master had already disengaged and retreated out of range. Chirrut had half a mind to smack her back, but decided to refrain.

He continued to stand as she circled, turning his head as she moved, determined not to be hit again. She said nothing for a long time, and Chirrut felt that she must be studying him, appraising him. As a child, he had once been the object of much poking and prodding from medical professionals due to his refractory blindness, but he judged that Juris’ gaze must be even more detached than theirs. “Let me ask you again,” he heard her ask. “How well do you hear? How well do you see?”

“I sense,” Chirrut snapped.

“Very good. But it seems the Force has brought me to this isolated moon some twenty standard years too late. Such a pity, such a waste.”

Silence followed, as the full weight of her words sank in. Chirrut drew a breath and held it still in his chest, feeling that he might have been crushed otherwise. 

“I sense you have another like him, bring him here. Really, how have you Guardians managed to hide them both for so long?” 

“Chirrut,” Abbyx Stele said quietly, “go get—”

“Baze,” Chirrut breathed, as he his heart sank. He couldn’t keep his voice from shaking. He turned and ran. 

* * *

“What’s wrong?” Baze scrambled to his feet when Chirrut burst into his room. He had never seen such a mix of distress and worry and despair on Chirrut’s face. Akeen too, who had been playing games on his datapad, put it down. Baze grabbed Chirrut by the shoulders. “What’s happened?” he asked, searching Chirrut’s expression. “What’s going on?”

“Come with me to Stele’s office.”

“What?”

“Just come!” Like a vice, Chirrut’s hand closed around his wrist and dragged him out the door. 

“Ow, that hurts! Force, no need to be so rough about it!” Baze protested as he stumbled along behind. Chirrut tapped along the corridors quickly with long strides, not waiting for him to regain his footing. “What’s happening? What does Stele want us for at this hour?”

Baze finally shook himself free of Chirrut’s grip, but Chirrut kept walking, nearly bowling over Binahz and Tash, who had come out of their quarters curiously when they heard the ruckus. 

“You want to know before you get there?” Chirrut asked angrily, which made Baze cross too because something, somebody, probably in the Abbyx’s office had upset Chirrut. 

“Yeah, I do.”

“Fine. There’s a Jedi here. A Jedi Master just walked into Abbyx Stele’s office.”

“What?” Binahz and Tash shot each other looks of disbelief, looked at Baze and Chirrut, and then back at each other with raised eyebrows. 

“”What?” Baze echoed. “What does that have to do with me?” Chirrut strode back, and grabbed Baze more gently this time, taking him by the hand and twining their fingers. 

Baze looked at Chirrut, but the younger man turned his face away. “Let’s go,” he said firmly, and would say no more as Baze followed, with a sense of dread.

* * *

Baze took an instant dislike to the woman in Stele’s office, who stood with her back straight, her hands held behind her like a military sergeant, regarding Baze and Chirrut as if they had just arrived late to the morning drills. Half a head taller than he, she gazed down at him with a dark, impassive stare, cutting an imposing figure with her bald head and dark skin. The clothes she wore were of a stylish local cut, but she did not comport herself like a resident of the Holy City; if she had been trying to blend in, she must have failed. Mostly hidden by the folds of her overcoat, hanging from a thick leather belt around her waist, Baze thought he could see a cylinder of metal—the Jedi’s signature weapon. 

Baze took a deep breath as Abbyx Stele made a cursory round of introductions. Chirrut moved off to the side of the room before Baze could stop him, taking a place against the wall, placing Baze between him and the Jedi. Baze had never seen Chirrut’s shoulders slump so, looking small and tired, and he decided that he disliked this Juris Okorefor, Jedi Master or no, because she had said or done something to hurt Chirrut. 

“How long have you had them here?” Juris studied Baze, but spoke to Abbyx Stele.

“Baze and Chirrut have been with us since the beginning of school.”

“Which is?”

“School starts at five standard years for humans.”

“And what have you done to nurture their abilities?” Baze ignored the prowling Jedi and looked at Chirrut’s bowed form. 

“We teach the Galactic Basic curriculum, in addition to some of our ancient traditions.”

“The fighting,” Juris said. “I’ve read that your order also constructs some sort of bowcaster.” 

“Yes,” Stele replied. They seemed weary of Juris. Baze wondered why Stele, of all people, was putting up with this arrogant Jedi asshole.

“Do you know how to use a bowcaster?” Juris asked of Baze. 

“Yes.” 

“And what about you?” Juris regarded Chirrut, but he didn’t respond.

“He’s blind,” Baze growled.

“Hmm…” Juris frowned in thought as her gaze drew inward. “Presumably, the proximity to the kyber and their daily meditation increases their awareness; it’s plausible,” she muttered. 

She turned her gaze back on Baze, and he stared back, defiantly. “Do you know why I called you here?”

Baze glanced at Chirrut, his friend, his brother, his lover. He had known the younger man for more than half his life now, and didn’t want to say the words rising to his mind. They had both always known, but had never spoken of it, because it wouldn’t have made a difference to their lives. There was no meaning in acknowledging a gift that Chirrut would never be able to use.

“Me?” Baze snorted. “I have no idea. But Chirrut, he’s Force-sensitive.”

“So are you,” Chirrut said quietly, the first thing he’d said since he’d dragged Baze in here.

Well, that was news to Baze. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not.” 

“Aw, fuck.” Baze threw up his arms. “Well, What am I doing here then?” Didn’t the Jedi just abandon any Force-sensitives they found who were too old to train? They were too old to drag off into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, so why was Juris here? Why were he and Chirrut even in the Abbyx’s office? Just because some asshole Jedi Master wanted to tell them something they—well, Chirrut anyway—already knew? 

“You are here,” Stele interjected, “because of the ancient accord we have with the Jedi, who are allowed to send their scientists here to study our kyber. As you know, we are to provide Master Okorefor with food, lodging, and access to the Chamber of Harmonies, and in exchange the Jedi pledge to assist us in times of need.”

“Seems like we’re getting the raw end of that deal,” grumbled Baze, glaring at Juris who ignored him, unfazed. As far as Temple history was concerned, it’d been millennia since the Jedi had come to the Temple’s assistance.

“Our traditions hold that only the Elders of our order are allowed in the Chamber, but unfortunately, nobody can be spared at this time.” Stele turned to Baze and Chirrut, and regarded them solemnly. “I have therefore chosen the both of you to escort Master Okorefor and assist her in her research instead. I am sure that you two will be attentive to her every need.”

Baze noted the Jedi’s stormy expression at Stele’s final words, but he could hardly gain much satisfaction either, after just being told he was being reassigned to babysitting duty.

“What if we don’t want to?” Chirrut asked.

“You don’t have a choice,” Stele sank back into their chair with a sigh. It was already late, and they massaged their temples looking exhausted. “I’m officially making it your new assignment, starting tomorrow for one year, the exact length of Master Okorefor’s sabbatical.”

“Tomorrow?!”

“One year?!” 

“My research is important and time is of the essence,” Juris said haughtily. 

“You will meet Master Okorefor at the Chamber of Harmonies after breakfast,” Abbyx Stele said, and waved their hand in dismissal.


	10. Harmonics (I)

Baze awoke with the Dawn Bells and Chirrut pressed against him. His vision was bleary; given last night’s revelations, he had not slept well. Word of the Jedi Master’s arrival had spread through the Temple yesterday like a dust storm, with Initiates and Guardians alike gathering in the dormitory to ask Baze and Chirrut questions—why, who, what, how, why again—until long after the midnight hour and Akeen had to beat everyone off so they could get some rest. Being awake this morning was not welcome, and Baze considered closing his eyes and ignoring his roommate’s groans as he slid out of his blankets.

“I don’t want to,” Chirrut mumbled this into Baze’s nightshirt. There was a clear quality to his voice, indicating that he’d been awake for quite some time already.

“Don’t want to what?” Akeen yawned, quickly throwing on robes in the pre-dawn chill. 

“Anything.” Chirrut replied with a small shrug.

“Okay. If you wanna swap escorting the—”

“Don’t,” Baze said, eyeing his roommate with a small shake of his head. Akeen shrugged, and continued getting dressed in silence.

“I don’t want to,” Chirrut said again, once Akeen had left them alone in the room.

“I know.”

“Abbyx Stele can’t make us.”

“Not Stele, no,” Baze admitted. 

“I’m going to stay in bed until somebody comes and drags me out.” 

That would probably last until breakfast, Baze supposed, when Abbyx Stele would figure out what was going on and send in a couple of the big adult acolytes. Or the security droids with the paralyzing spray and one big adult acolyte.

They lay in silence until long after the sounds of the morning stragglers rushing down to the courtyard to recite the Dawn Incantation receded, each with his own thoughts. Resentment rose and crested in Baze’s belly as he thought of the Jedi and her dark, chill stare, her meaningless offhand observation, and his blood boiled at the thought of escorting her for a year. He understood why the Abbyx had chosen them for the task, why they had lied about not being able to spare anyone else when they could have just as easily set a duty rota, like every other job in the Temple. The Jedi had acquiesced, did that mean…

Baze decided eventually he would rather go himself than be hauled out paralyzed on a stretcher. Knowing Abbyx Stele, they’d just have Baze and Chirrut set on the floor of the Chamber of Harmonies like statues to watch Juris Okorefor’s work from the ground. He jostled Chirrut. “Come on.”

“I’m not going.”

“Well, I gotta pee,” Baze said, pushing himself up, “and you’re blocking me in.”

“Are you going?”

“It’s better than being dragged out in front of the whole Temple.” 

“Oh,” Chirrut sighed with resignation, but rose from the bed when Baze gave him another shove. Baze helped Chirrut dress, and walked beside him when they were both ready.

* * *

No one but the Elders were allowed in the ancient and sacred Chamber of Harmonies buried deep beneath the ground. It was said that of all the places in the Temple, the Chamber was the closest in proximity to the Force, but Baze had always dismissed that as exaggeration. He would get find that out first hand, as the exceptions to the ‘Elders only’ rule for today and the next year were, apparently, Chirrut, Juris Okorefor, and him. 

The stairway leading to the Chamber was only accessible through a locked, nondescript back door in the small meditation room reserved for the Temple’s Guardian Elders. After the breakfast hour, Abbyx Stele waited there with an impassive expression on their face, grey eyes hard and resolute. Juris Okorefor stood next to an assortment of crates of various sizes, checking her chrono as Baze and Chirrut shuffled in past a crowd of curious onlookers.

“Good morning, you two,” the Jedi said by way of greeting. “I look forward to your company.” She nodded at them curtly, her tone civil but uninterested.

“I can’t say I feel the same,” Baze replied steadily. 

Juris’s expression did not waver as she returned his stare. “Then at least I hope we don’t get in each other’s way. Take these crates for me, if you please.”

Baze refused to move until Abbyx Stele allowed the request. “One crate at a time only,” they said firmly. “The stairs are steep. Please, Baze.”

Reluctantly, Baze stepped forward and picked up the smallest crate, which was much heavier than he’d expected. Chirrut stepped forward as if to help, but Baze told him, “I got it, you’re gonna need your cane hand free. Let’s go.” 

The door slid smoothly open at Stele’s touch upon the control panel, revealing what looked to be a small, dimly lit tunnel. The air here was still and cold, permeated with a musty scent that reminded Baze of the cellars in the kitchen. The Abbyx led them in single file, their path proceeding a short distance before taking a sharp spiral downward with steep, smooth steps, likely worn from the trek of Guardian Elders over thousands of years. The passage was hardly wide enough for two to walk abreast, its narrows walls illuminated by pinpricks of light that seemed to emanate from the very stones surrounding them. Baze was unable to tell whether the light was getting brighter or whether it was just his eyes habituating to their dim surroundings. 

“What do you see?” Chirrut asked from the rear of their little party, the tapping of his cane echoing alongside his footsteps. Baze might have worried about him, but Chirrut seemed sure-footed in his descent.

“It’s a narrow tunnel,” Baze replied. “There is geoluminescence here, like starlight, coming from the walls themselves, enough for us to see by. I think it’s getting brighter as we go. What about you?”

Chirrut took some time to consider his answer, brushing fingertips against the wall on his left, his expression thoughtful. “The stone here feels different from the rest of the Temple—older—but I guess that’s obvious.” 

They delved in silence for what seemed like minutes, until Baze’s shoulders and arms began to ache with the weight of the Jedi’s crate. Eventually, the light grew brighter until the narrow conduit opened into a massive, soaring cavern. Veins of kyber, illuminated by blue geoluminescence and ordinary diodes alike, ran in solid rivers along the floor, flowing up the walls and arching into the ceiling far above his head. Carved words and icons were inlaid in the stone walls alongside the kyber—scriptures and histories, the discovery of Jedha by the Jedi all the way down to the eighteen tasks of Abbyx Terra Shan, the first Guardian of the Whills six thousand years ago, the mother of their order. The pillar of kyber that pierced the center of the Grand Hall above was rooted in the Chamber, as a frozen spire of gossamer crystal that stretched upward from a large pool of still, clear water. Baze stared at the room in open-mouthed awe, forgetting momentarily about Chirrut until he spoke, sweeping his cane cautiously before him.

“I take it we’re here?” 

“Damn,” Juris muttered, striding immediately edge of the pool to admire the towering kyber crystal more closely. Baze set down his load while Abbyx Stele provided Chirrut with a serviceable description of the Chamber.

“It is said our ancestors were summoned by the kyber to this place and built the Temple above it, after it was abandoned by the Jedi.” Abbyx Stele eyed the Juris meaningfully as they spoke. “You understand, Master Okorefor, with your abilities, that we ask you to not interact interact directly with our crystals.”

“A Force-sensitive’s touch does not necessarily alter a kyber crystal’s properties,” Juris scoffed. “But of course, I will respect your wishes.” She strode to the crate that Baze had set down and began unpacking her equipment.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Abbyx Stele said with an arch of their eyebrow. “Lunch runs from the twelfth to the fourteenth hour, take care not to miss it.” And then they were gone, leaving Baze with Chirrut and a busy Jedi scientist.

“Thank you, Abbyx,” Juris replied belatedly, long after Stele had left. Baze, meanwhile, had guided Chirrut to the walls of the room to feel its carvings.

“What’re we supposed to do now?” Baze asked under his breath.

“I don’t know.” 

“The other crates,” Juris said. She’d finished unpacking, and was looking at Baze expectantly. 

“What with the other crates?” Baze asked.

“Bring them, please.” 

“Which ones?”

“All of them. Start with the blue one with the neutron pulse emitter, and then move to the black crates with the isoimaging units.” Juris snapped her fingers. “Chop chop, Malbus, it’s going to take a while.” 

Baze heaved a helpless sigh. “You stay here,” he muttered to Chirrut, and headed back up the passage.

* * *

Baze and Chirrut agreed on a plan of passive resistance against their new assignment: they’d help Juris move things, but nothing else to aid her research. They had their datapads to keep them entertained during the day in between long periods of stretching, meditation, and napping. They sparred in the Temple practice rooms during Juris’s lunch hour, and in the afternoons there were enough HoloNet channels that Baze could hack into to keep them occupied. For acolytes who had lived for five and six years with full daily schedules, their new lives were a pleasant holiday of lazing about without any responsibilities. 

After a fortnight of idleness, however, Baze noticed that Chirrut was starting to grow restless. They had beaten Tash’s high score on Exploding Tessellator, and now that Coruscant Blue: Special Investigations was between seasons, nothing else on the HoloNet seemed to hold their attention. Baze was determined not to bark at Chirrut for his restlessness before Juris did, but Chirrut had been striking the ringing bowl for ten minutes straight, and Baze thought that a few more seconds of that one tone might just result in his brain bursting from his skull. Juris, on the other hand, had a placid expression on her face that made Baze wonder if Jedi could shut off their own hearing. There was no other explanation for how Juris had managed to get anything done in the last two days. 

“For Force’s sake,” Baze finally cursed, unable to endure any further, “stop that!”

The voice of the ringing bowl, a pale imitation of the song of the kyber, continued for a few more seconds before Chirrut stopped and the noise began to fade. “What?” Chirrut asked. 

“I’m trying to read.”

“Read what?”

“ _Femtomotion and Lattice Energy Effects,_ ” Baze mumbled. Juris had sent it over to their datapads a week ago, and though they’d agreed not to touch a thing she’d transferred, he opened it by accident the day before and actually found it interesting. 

“What?!”

“ _Femtomotion and—_ ”

“You promised you wouldn’t start reading Juris’s book!” Chirrut protested. He didn’t bothering lowering his voice, and Baze glanced quickly at the Jedi, who betrayed no reaction and continued her work on a makeshift bench, her equipment arrayed in one half of the Chamber. To Baze it looked like she was setting up some giant metal tube—the neutron pulse emitter—and a circular sensor array. 

“It’s not like there’s anything else to do down here,” Baze grumbled. 

“We could...try some tight-space sparring?”

“And get our asses toasted by Stele if we break something? No, thank you.”

“We could do...you know, other stuff,” Chirrut suggested. 

“For a whole year? Every single day?”

“Why not?” asked Chirrut brightly.

“No,” said Baze, and steadfastly ignored all of Chirrut’s further attempts to distract him.  
Kyber crystallography was not something he’d been particularly interested in school; if not for his devotion to the Guardians, Baze had always figured himself more of an engineering, building things type, like Chirrut’s mother, Laanfei. But the more he read, the more he was intrigued by the fundamental questions of kyber crystals—from where did the rudimentary sentience of the the kyber arise? Why were synthetic kyber crystals unable to replicate the basic attributes of real kyber? How was it that the lattices of kyber allowed for impurities that created a diversity in crystal types, while preserving its energy-magnifying properties? “This is pretty good,” he admitted.

“Ugh.” Chirrut wrinkled his nose.

Baze’s datapad buzzed with another transfer. Not a book this time, but what looked like several separate manuscripts— _Okorefor Arrangements in Ilum Samples, Differential Impurities Affecting Power Output in the Dur Frequencies,_ and so on. Baze glanced up at Juris, who was assembling the final pieces of a miniature sample stage next to her computer console.

“What am I going to do while you read?” Chirrut hissed.

“You can read too,” Baze replied, as Chirrut made another noise of disgust. Chirrut flopped on a cushion on the floor on the far side of the room, putting as much distance between him and the Jedi as possible. He appeared to settle and calm himself for meditation, but Baze recognized a pout when he saw one. 

He stayed awake late into the night, long after Akeen’s snores started, poring over his datapad and the volumes of information that the Jedi had sent. Baze had always assumed that the most fundamental questions about kyber crystals had long been explained, but in truth, he realized it was the opposite—they knew next to nothing about kyber. The more he read the more questions seem to remain unanswered. 

The next morning, his task of accompanying the Jedi in the Chamber did not seem quite as onerous as before. Baze felt a pang of guilt as he approached Juris, ignoring Chirrut’s silent pleading for him not to. They’d made an agreement, but surely Chirrut can’t have expected it to last for an entire year. 

“I’ll help you ,” Baze offered to Juris, “but then you’ll need to find a way to keep Chirrut occupied.” 

“Îmwe is hardly my responsibility.”

“No, but he’s going to drive us both crazy if you can’t think of something.”

“I’m right here, you know,” said Chirrut, lounging sulkily from his cushion on the far side of the room. “I’m blind, not deaf.” Baze and Juris both ignored him. 

“Fine. I think I have just the thing for him,” Juris said after a moment’s thought. She rummaged about her things and pulled out a small spherical droid, not much larger than the size of her hand. 

“It’s just a security remote.” Baze eyed it warily as Juris opened a small hatch in its side and tinkered with its controls; he’d stopped trusting the things since a certain incident some five years ago. “We have a few wandering the Temple.”

“Yes, and this one I’ve customized myself.”

Baze did not find that very reassuring. With a click, Juris closed the hatch on the droid, and it floated into the air on silent thrusters. The bad feeling that Baze had been nursing since Juris had taken it out was quickly confirmed when it fired a small particle bolt at him. “Ow!” It stung like being stabbed by a needle. 

“The other one,” Juris instructed the droid, and the remote glided toward Chirrut who was already on his feet in response to Baze’s pained yelp. Chirrut barely dodged a bolt that sailed past his ear and dispersed behind him with a sizzle. 

“What the—”

“Don’t worry, it’s on the lowest power setting. It’s only a little unpleasant if you get hit,” said Juris, a wide, satisfied smile crossing her features as she watched Chirrut scurry to avoid another shot. 

“Hey, why me and not him?” asked Chirrut, the edges of his voice tinged with enough hurt to make Baze feel a twinge of guilt.

“I’m certain you already know the answer to that question,” replied Juris. Her smile turned into a frown as Chirrut alternately succeeded and then failed to dodge the next bolt, hissing in pain at the unexpected shock.

Baze pulled the Jedi aside. “This is cruel, and it’s not what I had in mind.” 

Juris sniffed. “This is how we start training our younglings when they’re five standard years old.”

“My observation stands.” Baze replied, beginning to wonder if all Jedi were slightly insane if this was what they subjected their children to before they learned how to read. What did they do to kids who were ten standard years, then, or fifteen? 

With an impassive expression Juris stared at him, holding his gaze as she declared, “Malbus will get his turn when you’ve dodged five shots in a row, Îmwe. And he’ll have to do it blindfolded.”

“Oh, goody, I’m looking forward to that,” Chirrut hissed.

Baze wisely kept quiet as Juris left the remote droid and Chirrut to their devices, and motioned him over to her bench where she passed him a schematic for the assembly of what she called her pulse diffraction rig.

* * *

After being pummeled by droid fire, Chirrut didn’t speak to Baze for the rest of the day and disappeared immediately after dinner. Baze went looking for him in all the usual places, but found not a trace of his friend, not even at Midnight Rites. He decided to try Chirrut’s room afterwards, but it was Ceppler who answered the door.

“Nope,” Ceppler replied when Baze asked if he knew of Chirrut’s whereabouts. “I don’t know why you think I know, when even you don’t know.” Ceppler’s dark eyes blinked at him curiously, perhaps wondering what Baze must have done to piss Chirrut off enough to disappear for an entire evening. 

“Great,” Baze sighed, and lingered the doorway hoping that maybe if he stayed for a bit, he might catch Chirrut coming back to his room.

“Have you tried talking to him about it?” Ceppler asked after it became apparent that Baze wasn’t going anywhere. 

“If we’d talked about it I wouldn’t be trying to find him now.”

“Maybe try earlier next time.”

Any explanation that Baze tried to come up with—that he was busy helping the Jedi set up her instruments and then busy dodging low-energy security droid salvos because that’s what the Jedi do to their children—didn’t feel adequate under the weight of Ceppler’s steady gaze. “I…” was all that he managed to say.

“I’ll let you know if I see him,” Ceppler said after another long moment of silence. Baze had the feeling that the Sullustan probably wouldn’t, but took the hint and shuffled off to his own room, where Akeen had already buried himself in blankets, fast asleep. 

Baze didn’t see Chirrut for the Dawn Incantation or at breakfast the next day, but Chirrut was waiting for him alongside Juris in the meditation room at the usual time. The presence of the Jedi made Baze reluctant to broach the topic of what had happened yesterday, but he still managed a hastily whispered, “I’m sorry,” as they made their customary descent. 

“Mmhmm,” Chirrut replied, and refused to engage Baze in conversation the rest of the trek down.

The security remote sprung to life when it detected their entrance into the Chamber, firing off a quick volley of two shots. Chirrut ducked smoothly, but Baze was hit square in the chest by both.

“Good reflexes, Îmwe,” Juris said. 

Baze scowled, rubbing at the spot where he’d been hit twice. 

“Looks like it’s Malbus’ turn first today.” Juris tossed him the blindfold, but Chirrut intercepted, snatching it out of the air and throwing it back. 

“No, it’s mine.” Chirrut shoved Baze out of way of another bolt, stepping to the side and tracking its trajectory as it glided through the Chamber lining up its next shot. “Give it to Baze and it’ll be mid-afternoon before it’s my turn.” 

“I’m not that bad,” Baze protested, but Juris shrugged as the remote focused back on Chirrut. She passed more schematics to him. 

“Why don’t you finish connecting the cryo-cooled isoimaging array to the data bank.”

“Sure,” Baze grumbled. He glanced over at Chirrut, who seemed to be capable of avoiding more than half of the droid’s shots.

“See if you can dodge ten in a row, before you pass it onto Malbus.”

Chirrut grinned as the air in front of his nose crackled with energy, and was then absorbed into the walls. “It’ll be his turn before he knows it.”

* * *

The mess hall was the social highlight of the evening, where Guardians and Initiates alike exchanged gossip and chatter over dinner to the ambient sounds of the HoloNet Nightly News. Ordinarily, Baze and Chirrut would sit with their friends—Ceppler, Akeen, Tash, Binahz—but tonight they were left a wide berth, their friends conspicuously choosing to chat with other groups, so they perched on the end of one of the mess’s long benches, the seats next to them pointedly empty.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Baze said. 

“What for?” 

“For...for letting Juris sic that remote on you yesterday.”

Chirrut nodded. “And?” he prompted.

“And I’m sorry I kind of felt relieved about it.”

“I accept your apology.” Chirrut said in a way that didn’t sound like he’d forgiven Baze yet, but might, eventually.

“I just didn’t want to be sullen and awkward with Juris all year.” 

“I know,” Chirrut sighed. “It’s part of the deal that Abbyx Stele made with her. But you still could’ve told me you wanted that so badly.” 

“Don’t you?”

“Maybe,” Chirrut admitted, after a moment’s thought. “Who wouldn’t want to be trained by a Jedi, even for a bit? But you should’ve told me instead of using me as some excuse. That was unfair.”

Baze poked at the rapidly cooling aeroponically grown potatoes on his plate. “You’re right,” he said. “I should’ve—we should’ve just gone up to her and asked directly. Together.”

“Yes.”

They sat in mutual silence for a while, picking at their food.

“I did some research,” said Chirrut finally.

“You?” Baze exclaimed, and then winced as Chirrut delivered a kick to his shins under the table.

“Yes, shut up!” Chirrut protested as Baze chuckled, as the icy distance between them grew warmer again. “The Jedi training remotes—they actually do train their kids like that. When they’re five.”

“I still think that’s insanity.” 

“Apparently, the next step is that they give them lightsabers.”

“Lightsabers? They give those things to little kids?” 

“Small, low energy ones. But they’re supposed to be learning how to deflect incoming fire.” 

“When they’re five?!” 

“More or less.” 

_“Five!”_

Chirrut shrugged. “They started teaching us to how punch each other here when we were seven.”

“There’s a difference between sparring and giving a little kid a weapon that’s made to slice off body parts. They didn’t give us staffs for a while, and they didn’t let us even touch lightbows until our last school year, and even then they weren’t loaded. Also, who’s shooting at five year-old Jedi?” Chirrut shrugged again; he had no idea. Baze rolled his eyes. “They’re all crazy.”

“Probably in more ways than one. But…” 

“But…?” Baze considered Chirrut’s observation on Jedi training. “Are you thinking that Juris might let us try out her…”

“Won’t hurt to ask, will it?” Chirrut suggested with a grin.

Baze nodded. “Then we’ll ask.”

* * *

Juris’s peals of laughter echoed off the walls of the Chamber of Harmonies. Baze and Chirrut had to wait for her to calm down and firmly tell them “No,” still wiping tears of mirth from the corners of her eyes. “No,” she said again when the wheezing stopped for good, just in case they hadn’t gotten it the first time. “Not a chance. But the energy bolts are low enough that they can be dispersed by traditional, non-energy weapons.”

“But Stele would have a heart attack if they found us waving our staffs about down here,” Baze said.

Juris gave him a long look before turning back to her computer, saying, “If that’s how you feel about it, then I can’t help you.” Afterwards very few words passed between the three of them as Juris turned the security remote back on, and Baze took turns with Chirrut engaging its attention for the rest of the day. 

The next morning, Baze sneaked a training staff from one of the practice rooms down to the Chamber. Juris did not make any remarks when she saw it, and the remote approached them with more caution, firing from a greater distance. At the end of the day, Baze left the staff leaning in a dark corner. Juris never remarked on the new weapon either over the subsequent days, but once in a while, when Baze would pause in his work or his reading to observe the fluid, elegant grace of Chirrut flitting between droid fire, he’d catch Juris watching and nodding with approval.


	11. Harmonics (II)

Baze and Chirrut soon grew accustomed to the new rhythm of their lives spending the bulk of their hours in Juris’s company. Baze assisted with the technical aspects of the Jedi’s research, assembling microspectrometers, aligning imaging arrays, and coding analysis scripts, while Chirrut dueled the remote. At the end of each morning, they hustled Juris to the mess for lunch and endured her daily grumbling about the interruption to her work. Afterwards, it was Baze’s turn to engage the remote, and he would spend the whole afternoon trying to catch up with Chirrut’s score. 

On this particular day, Chirrut’s score for the morning was dodging one hundred of the remote’s shots, a remarkable feat given less than three months’ practice. Baze had caught Juris looking somewhat impressed with Chirrut’s progress, even catching a muttered, “not bad”, which by the her standards was praise all the way into the stratosphere. It did not help Baze’s mood as he received the staff from Chirrut to take his turn. He was struggling to match Chirrut against the remote, and there were plenty of days when he doubted that he ever would. It felt a bit like practical forms with Master Xian again, except Baze was a senior Initiate and determined not to let Chirrut’s talent frustrate him. The fact that it did made him even more grumpy. “You make it look easy,” Baze grumbled. He didn’t say _you make it look good,_ either because he wanted to save those words for later, or because jealousy, frustration, and attraction was a weird mix of emotions he didn’t like. 

“You’ll catch up eventually,” replied Chirrut, off-handedly confident. He settled on a cushion and assumed a meditative posture that meant he was closely tracking Baze’s awkward attempts to match his morning’s accomplishments through his much stronger connection to the Force. 

Part of Baze wanted to tackle Chirrut to the ground right there and then, and fuck him senseless. Part of him wanted to lob the staff in the remote’s direction and scream that this pointless training exercise was not one of his talents. Instead, Baze wrenched his attention from both of those fantasies to the cloth he was tying around his eyes, and little floating droid gliding about aiming its crosshairs at his head. Blinded, he strained his senses through the darkness, hearing Juris at her workbench on the far side of the Chamber where she tapped sharply at the keys of her computer console crunching through reams of data. She was searching for what she called Algorithms of Symmetric Expansion, the putative arrangements of particles and impurities that uniquely allowed kyber crystal structures to transduce the Force. Then a bolt zapped him on the hand holding his staff. Baze growled; it wasn’t the sting so much as the surprise that he hated.

“You’re overthinking it again,” Chirrut observed.

“I know,” snapped Baze, more testily than intended. Chirrut had taken to saying that every single day for a month now, half in mockery, half in sardonic encouragement, and was right every time. It was a reminder that Baze needed to stop hating being bad at things—anything—and also that Chirrut loved how he was too damn stubborn to give up trying to be good at something he was bad at. Chirrut had said this once as a joke about Baze’s sexual technique. Baze had responded by making Chirrut come so hard he almost blacked out. By that example, perhaps there was hope Baze would master the remote after all. Tempering his frustration, he tried to empty his mind of all the facts and lessons that automatically floated to the surface of his brain. It didn’t matter how much he’d read up on Onasi indices and Surik arrangements, or how much he understood the mathematics of the Fourinns transforms that described the properties of kyber crystal energy amplification—if he couldn’t open himself to the Force, he would have no hope of making it to the mess by the beginning of dinner. 

Another shot landed, this time on his left ear. Baze breathed through the unpleasant pain. Stop thinking, he told himself, listen. As with meditation, one did not reach for the song of the kyber, one opened oneself to its resonance—all Baze needed was a fraction of a second. In it, as Juris had instructed, was the Force—the hypersymmetry of topological models, the correspondence binding fundamental particles in pairs, telling him a story different to the one told by his physical senses, a story on a different plane.

_I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me._

Baze stopped thinking. He took a step to the side, and felt a bolt sizzle past. Bringing the tip of his staff about, he dispersed another shot, then another, and another.

He reached one hundred and five before a shot zapped him on the arm. “I thought you’d never finish,” Chirrut said.

Baze pulled off the sweaty blindfold. His lover had lapsed from his meditation pose to sprawl across cushions in a manner that managed to be both exasperatingly childish and enticing. Baze grinned. “You just hate having your record broken.”

“I do,” Chirrut admitted readily, “and I’ll break yours tomorrow.”

* * *

Baze and Chirrut’s assignment to Juris Okorefor relieved them from most of their Initiate responsibilities, but not all, and there were plenty of hours between dinner and final prayers for them to assist with laundry or maintenance. Only the nighttime hours were theirs alone, meaning that it wasn’t until after Midnight Rites that they were able to sneak away. Their usual tryst spots, however, were either already occupied or had grown worn and boring, which was probably why Chirrut playfully suggested, “How about the Elder’s meditation room?” 

Baze’s jaw dropped. “Are you insane!”

“Nobody else would think of that room, and Juris is in her quarters,” Chirrut said, his tone far too reasonable. For lack of better options, Baze gave in. 

He admitted no small degree of thrill as they entered what used to be the meditation room, which since Juris’s arrival had been repurposed as a data processing cluster and equipment storage facility. Crates, both empty and full, were stacked in various piles. Baze helped Chirrut navigate a new delivery in the center of the room, then shivered when Chirrut shoved him against the closed door of the Chamber and pulled a blindfold out from his robes, clearly pocketed after the day’s training. 

“Oh, you know what I like,” Baze purred as once again his eyes were blinded. That done, he hungrily kissed Chirrut, at which point words were no longer necessary. Baze wrapped his fists in the fabric of Chirrut’s collar and hauled him closer, feeling Chirrut’s knee shove between his legs while a hand fondled his hardening cock through his clothes. With a satisfied sigh, Baze relaxed into the dark and let himself delight in the breaths filling the space between their mouths as they parted, and the pleasing squish of their noses as they met again. Insistence and eagerness gave way to familiar comfort, allowing Baze to coax easy, uninhibited moans out of Chirrut, both from placing an ardent bite on Chirrut’s neck and giving his bottom an impatient squeeze.

Possibilities unfolded before him—him sinking to his knees, Chirrut taking him against the door, their bodies crushed together on the floor. Suddenly Chirrut’s body stiffened and Baze froze too, part as a reaction to Chirrut, then from sensing the intruding presence. It was too late to pretend nothing was happening as Baze tore off his blindfold to find the room’s lights flickering to life and revealing Juris standing motionless in the doorway.

“Hello,” Chirrut said mildly. There was an opportunity for him to take a step back from Baze, but he did not take it. “What a surprise.”

“I…” Juris faltered and averted her eyes, and Baze’s eyebrow rose. He had never expected to see the Jedi Master struggle for words. Finally, she managed, ”I didn’t… I have heard that the Guardians of the Whills are permissive of such relations.”

Three months of working together, and Juris had never realized that he and Chirrut were lovers? “We are,” Baze replied, trying to mask his incredulity.

Juris cleared her throat. “It has become evident, with hindsight, that this is not the first sexually intimate encounter you’ve had.”

Chirrut’s mouth twitched with amusement. “We have been engaging in regular ‘sexually intimate encounters’ for six and a half standard years.” 

“I see,” Juris replied neutrally, and made for the newly delivered crates as if she hadn’t interrupted anything. All hope that she might leave and let them get on with it faded as she began to rifle through the boxes. Awkwardly, Baze and Chirrut finally separated a step. “And what do the Guardians teach about your...bond?” 

It was first question she’d asked, Baze realized, that wasn’t some probe to confirm a theory of hers. “It’s normal. All is the Force wills it.” 

Juris made a non-committal noise as if she had a rebuttal, or more likely, a question whose answer she wanted them to think about, but was choosing to save it for later. “Well, I was going to inform you tomorrow morning, but I suppose now is as good a time as any. I’ve received permission from the Abbyx to take you out with me for fieldwork.”

“Fieldwork?” Baze did not like the sound of this.

“Of course. Small heterogeneities exist in the kyber veins in the Chamber of Harmonies, meaning that the ancient kyber mines scattered on this moon might also hold crystals with differing properties. As the Republic regulation designating Jedha as a Protected Cultural Heritage Zone forbids me from removing anything for my research, I will need you to help me conduct some observations in the field.”

“You mean help with the equipment and instruments,” Baze said.

“Yes.”

“Both of us?” Chirrut asked, a fair question, since Chirrut and science were not two things that went together. He’d nearly shattered Juris’s cryostatic generator the first time he tried assisting her, and been banned from her side of the Chamber ever since.

“Yes,” Juris replied, “since you seem to provide valuable services to Malbus.” 

Baze groaned. “That’s not how it works.” 

“Maybe, but I don’t think you’re in a state to deny that fact.” Again Baze groaned, but Juris wasn’t done. “I’ve forwarded a list of suggested supplies to your datapads. We’ll be going the day after tomorrow, first thing in the morning. You can have all day tomorrow to prepare, and there will be no need to escort me to the Chamber as I’ll be packing as well. Any questions?” 

Baze wondered if she was going to apologize for interrupting them, but clearly that ship had left orbit. Stiffly, Juris grabbed a few things and strode out of the room. “Goodnight,” she said, not turning back. Then she turned off the lights, slid the door shut, and left them standing uncomfortably in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, my deepest gratitude to [Leareth](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Leareth/) who is both my beta reader and my friend, who pushes me to write better and offers support and encouragement. Thank you.
> 
> Those of you who are Chinese speakers will recognize that the Chinese title of this work appears to be grammatically incorrect. The title is in fact a reference to the [Two-Body Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem), which in classical mechanics describes the motion of two masses that orbit each other, e.g. a binary star system. In Chinese, this is called [二体问题](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%8C%E9%AB%94%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C). The title is also a purposeful homage to Liu Cixin's novel, _The Three-Body Problem_ , which in Chinese is simply 三体.


End file.
